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Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Looking for Love in all the wrong places

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where should we search? Where does that search take us? The mystics suggest that we look within, within ourselves and within others. Unfortunately, we waste a lot of time and effort looking for truth and meaning in all the wrong places. We are, after all, on a spiritual quest not a worldly one. The pearls and diamonds of great worth will be found on the path of the spirit not on the path of the ego.

There are times when we are quiet and still that we sense there is something more deep in us and in other people.That something more is the glimmer of the divine. We want it desperately and we search for it usually in all the wrong places.

Johnny Lee's great song "Looking for love in all the wrong places" sums up the problem succinctly in an entertaining way.

That "something more" is not to found on the path of the ego. It is not external to us where all we find is counterfeit. What we find is "fool's gold." What we find may be temporarily pleasurable but then becomes boring once we are satiated. We come to realize that pleasure is not the same thing as joy and while joy is better, joy is not the same thing as bliss and bliss is what we seek and is to be found in the union with the Beloved.

A Course In Miracles teaches that bliss is to be found in the miracle and the miracle is simply a choice to perceive at the level of spirit rather than ego. The level of spirit is Love. We simply ask "What would Love have me do?" "What would Love have me see?" "What is the Loving thing deep in myself and in my brothers and sisters?"

As the Beatles say, "Love is all you need." However, we have to be on the path of spirit to see it within which means we have to turn back from looking for love in all the wrong places.